Archives for June 2012

Google’s latest product, the Nexus Q, is a home media player that allows you to play video from the Web on your TV. The concept of the product is not revolutionary, but the fact that it is manufactured in the United States is. Companies such as Apple have long since become US design boutiques that outsource all of their manufacturing to Asia. It’s probably too early to call this a trend, but The New York Times describes the situation like this:

It’s a trickle, but some American companies are again making products in the United States. While many of those companies have been small, like ET Water Systems, there have also been some highly visible moves by America’s largest consumer and industrial manufacturers. General Electric and Caterpillar, for example, have moved assembly operations back to the United States in the last year. (Airbus, a European company, is said to be near a deal to build jets in Alabama.)

There is no single reason for the change. Rising labor and energy costs have made manufacturing in China significantly more expensive; transportation costs have risen; companies have become increasingly aware of the risks of the theft of intellectual property when products are made in China; and in a business where time-to-market is a competitive advantage, it is easier for engineers to drive 10 minutes on the freeway to the factory than to fly for 16 hours.

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Fisker Automotive, a manufacturer of electric sports cars, has run into trouble. That’s bad enough, but that may be really bad news for lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems and for the entire sector. The MIT Technology Review broke down the domino effect like this:

With Rick Santorum’s poll numbers on the rise, it seems like there might be a meaningful race between him and Romney for the Republican nomination. Perhaps feeling confident after his February 7 sweep of the primaries in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota, Santorum may be going all in. Grist just did a great roundup of Santorum’s […]

In the movies, when we find out that a meteor is hurtling toward the earth, we always send Bruce Willis (or some other equally capable Hollywood hero) to save us from extinction. The way the world banded together to reduce the production and consumption of ozone depleting substances through the Montreal Protocol in 1987 was an […]

Vinod Khosla would like all of us to be a lot more ambitious; even other VCs are too risk averse in his mind. In his new paper, Black Swans Thesis of Energy Transformation he argues that The looming twin challenges of climate change and energy production are too big to be tacked by known solutions […]

Stewart Brand has had a remarkable green life. First he was a member of the Merry Pranksters with Ken Kesey. Then he famously went on to found the Whole Earth Catalog, which continues to have influence today. At Plenty we did our own look at what was the lasting effect of The Whole Earth Catalogue. […]